Lex Libertas

Weapons of Mass Destruction as

Weapons of Mass Destruction as a Red Herring

I am tired of the justifications for war being misrepresented in the media. Especially this claim that since we haven't found WMDs yet, the war is a failure, Bush and the CIA are liars, and we never should have gone to war in the first place. I reached the breaking point after this pointless article by Molly Ivins at Working For Change. Basically, the main Bush haters are saying, "Either Bush lied, or we had a huge intelligence failure."

To respond directly to this point: neither is correct. The WMD evidence has been known for a long time. After the first Gulf War we found plenty of materials, including a nuclear weapons project. This is what spawned the 17 UN Resolutions over the next decade. We knew what he had, so did the UN. Defectors regularly gave details throughout the 1990's. Saddam Hussein was supposed to get rid of his stockpiles, and verify that fact through the inspectors. Since he did everything he could to impede the progress of these inspectors, it was very reasonable to assume that he was not cooperating, and hence still had the materials. We know what it is like when a country gets rid of its nuclear and other materials. They cooperate, they allow flyovers, they give unlimited access. We have empirical examples of this in countries such as South Africa and Ukraine when they disarmed. Given this information, the logical conclusion was that Saddam had not disarmed. We knew he had these materials at one point, he was supposed to provide documentation that he destroyed them, and he never produced it. Period. No reasonable person would conclude from his actions that he had disarmed.

Now we get into the justifications for war.

Let's start with the Weapons of Mass Destruction, because as Wolfowitz said, it's the only argument everyone could agree on. As per the previous paragraph, we know he had them, and we had not been given any reason to believe he was not still in possession of them. Furthermore, Saddam has a long history of supporting terrorism. Abu Nidal, one of the most accomplished terrorists ever, lived out his life in comfortable asylum in Iraq. Saddam had office space in Baghdad for Hamas. And he gave $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers in Israel. During the war, we found Abu Abbas. But wait, I forgot, there's "no link to terrorism." Saddam's actions showed he is a friend, harborer, funder, and trainer of terrorists. Terrorists who hate Israel, America, democracy, and the West in general. Couple this to the idea of WMDs and we see why Saddam was such a threat. He could easily give WMDs to a terrorist group to devliver anywhere in the world, without his fingerprints.

The next important justification was the humanitarian mission. Before the war, many people were talking about this. Saddam Hussein would have people eaten by dogs or burned alive, killed for the most minor of offenses. He had professional rapists. Why didn't the liberals cry out over that? The man institutionalized one of the most barbaric and horrific acts possible. The rapes were often done in front of husbands and family members. Women prisoners, as punishment, would be hung upside down during their period, so that the blood would flow down their bodies. Torture chambers were commonplace. Uday Hussein was free to run rampant over the country, doing as he pleased, including raping thirteen year old girls for his pleasure. Even more surprising were the images of children being freed from prison, or mass graves of kids buried with their dolls. When it comes to human rights abuses, Iraq was right up there with the worst of them. If we had to pick a country to invade based solely on human rights, Iraq would have been tied with North Korea. This alone was reason enough to invade. Liberals charge back that we supported Saddam Hussein during the 1980's, even when he committed the massacres and gassing of the Kurds. The simple response is that we can and should learn from past mistakes. Because we once supported him, does not mean we cannot wise up. Beyond that, since it was our support that allowed him to rise to power, we have an even greater responsibility to remove the monster we created.

Third, if anyone wants international law to be respected at all, this action was necessary. Saddam violated 17 binding Security Counsel resolutions over the course of a decade. Many of these were Chapter VII, calling for military action to be imposed if there is a breech of compliance. Saddam violated more resolutions that any other country in history. Some people would point out Israel, but that comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of international law. The vast majority of resolutions against Israel were done by the General Assembly, and thus non-binding. The highest Security Counsel resolution against Israel was a Chapter VI, calling for mediation on the part of the parties affected, not military action. To allow Saddam Hussein to flout, on an annual basis, the highest and most binding of International Law demonstrates its decent into irrelevance. Anyone who truly cares about the "rule of law," ought be concerned with such behaviour. Furthermore, the UN was in dereliction of duty when it refused to follow through on its function of enforcing the resolutions, as described in Chapter VII of the Charter. US military action was not a pre-emptive strike. Since Saddam Hussein was in violation of the ceasefire terms ending the Gulf War of 1991, that engagement was continuing. Allied military action in 2003 was simply a continuation of '91, and an attempt to enforce the ceasefire.

The last main reason for the invasion was to establish a Middle Eastern democracy. A democratic Arab country would be a beacon of hope for the rest of the Middle East and its reformers. It would prove that life can and will improve if the corrupt Arab regimes are forced to give way.

Clearly, we can see that WMDs were only one of the reasons, and that the current situation in no way shows that our pre-war analysis was flawed. Even if we never find WMDs, the logic behind the invasion is intact - there was no reason to believe that the weapons had been destroyed. Beyond that, for reasons of humanity and democracy, that regime had to go. We must always remember that anyone who did not want the war was de facto complicit in the atrocities that occurred under Saddam's regime; and if they had their way, women would still be daily raped, pre-teenage children would be imprisoned and executed, Uday would be on the loose, terrorism would still have a home and benefactor, and the world would be a much more dangerous place. Now the world knows we are serious.

In the words of Paulo Freire, "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

Posted by Owen at June 4, 2003 01:20 PM | TrackBack